WELL, THAT WAS CERTAINLY QUICK: NEW LAWSUIT CHALLENGES SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER EFPS

 

Just ten days ago, I wrote about the National Marine Fisheries Service’s less-than-wise decision to issue exempted fishing permits that will allow the four South Atlantic states to set their own red snapper regulations, even for anglers fishing in federal waters, and how those permits will allow anglers to severely overfish the red snapper stock.

The exempted fishing permits were issued on May 1^st. 

On May 5^th, a lawsuit challenging their issuance was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.  So far, the lawsuit hasn’t gotten much mention in the press, but I obtained a copy of the complaint, and so know the basic details. 

The action was brought by the Southeastern Fisheries Association, Inc., a commercial fishing trade association, as lead plaintiff.  Two commercial fishing companies in North Carolina, along with two North Carolina commercial fisherman and another from Florida, are also listed as plaintiffs.  Defendants are, as one would expect, Howard Lutnick as Secretary of Commerce and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The list of parties will inevitably grow.  The recreational fishing industry, in the form of the American Sportfishing Association, the largest angling industry trade group, and the Coastal Conservation Association, an “anglers’ rights” organization that walks in lockstep with the ASA and conforms to the trade group’s decisions, has already announced its intention to intervene in the action in support of the exempted fishing permits.  It is reasonable to believe that one or more marine conservation groups may eventually intervene on behalf of the plaintiffs.

The premise of the complaint is simple and straightforward, expressed in its first five paragraphs:

“The case challenges an illegal fishery management action taken by the Defendants Howard Lutnick, in his official capacity as Secretary of Commerce, and the National Marine Fisheries Service (“NMFS”).  Specifically, on or about May 1, 2026, Defendants issued so-called ‘exempted fishing permits’ to the states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, which would allow a massive amount of recreational fishing for South Atlantic red snapper in 2026 and beyond.

“The factual record establishes that under the challenged permits, red snapper landings in 2026 will substantially exceed the stock’s annual catch limit.  The record also establishes that under the challenged permits, fishing mortality in 2026 will be so high as to cause overfishing on South Atlantic red snapper.  Furthermore, the record establishes that actual recreational landings of red snapper in 2026 will not even come close to following the stock’s governing allocation ratio.

“Preventing overfishing, managing stocks under annual catch limits, and ensuring fair and equitable allocations are core requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act… (‘Magnuson-Stevens Act’ or ‘the Act’).

“The Magnuson-Stevens Act nowhere allows Defendants to waive the statutory requirements for annual catch limit management, preventing overfishing, and for fair and equitable allocations—whether through the use of ‘exempted fishing permits’ or otherwise.

“Excessive catch of South Atlantic red snapper in 2026 will harm the stock.  Stock abundance and biomass will be depleted, and its rebuilding progress will be set back.  [formatting omitted]”

Those allegations seem to present legitimate grievances, particularly in view of an Ocean Conservancy analysis which noted that

“The EFP proposals failed to include estimates of the number of fish they anticipate catching or how many people will be allowed to catch them, even though such estimates are required as art of the EFP application/approval process.  Ocean Conservancy has used available data to estimate the number of fish that could be caught.  The annual catch limit, or ACL, for the recreational sector is 22,797 fish.  A recent two-day red snapper fishing season in Florida alone resulted in 24,885 landed fish, which exceeds that limit.  A simple expansion using this Florida landings rate and ignoring the contribution from other states who will have even longer fishing seasons, suggests that as many as 485,000 fish could be landed in a 39-day season.  This is over 20 times the annual catch limit—a clear violation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

Still, there are two sides to every lawsuit, and particularly when challenging administrative actions, wins rarely come easily.

The exempted fishing permits and resultant lawsuit test the boundaries of exempted fishing permits.  Magnuson-Stevens states that

“…the Secretary [of Commerce], in consultation with the [regional fishery management] Councils, shall promulgate regulations that create an expedited, uniform, and regionally-based process to promote issuance, where practicable, of experimental fishing permits.  [What are called “experimental” fishing permits in Magnuson-Stevens are deemed “exempted” fishing permits by NMFS.]”

The result was 50 C.F.R. 600.475, titled "Scientific research activity, exempted fishing, and exempted educational activity."  Subsection (b)(1) of that regulation provides,

“A NMFS Regional Administrator or Director may authorize, for limited testing, public display, data collection, exploratory fishing, compensation fishing, conservation engineering, health and safety surveys, environmental cleanup, and/or hazard removal purposes, the target or incidental harvest of species managed under [a fishery management plan] or fishery regulations that would otherwise be prohibited…Data collection designed to capture and land quantities of fish for product development, market research, and/or public display must be permitted under exempted fishing procedures.  An EFP exempts a vessel only from those regulations specified in the EFP.  All other applicable regulations remain in effect…  [emphasis added]”

Usually, EFPs are issued to a small number of parties, perhaps even to a single vessel, that will be conducting focused research, and usually result in relatively small levels of exempted landings.  However, in this case, NMFS needed to somehow shoehorn the South Atlantic red snapper EFPs issued to the four states, which would affect many thousands of anglers and potentially hundreds of thousands of fish, into that authorization language.  They are attempting to do that by characterizing the exempted fishing as a new data collection effort, titling the Florida permit (and using similar language in all four EFPs)

“Exempted Fishing Permit to Test a State-based Data Collection and Management System for the Recreational Harvest of Red Snapper off Florida for 2026,”

and stating in the permit that

“[The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission] is pilot testing the use of its State Reef Fish Survey (SRFS) and a voluntary smartphone application (phone app) during an extended recreational fishing season for red snapper in state and federal waters of the South Atlantic.  FWC intends the activities conducted under the EFP to improve data on recreational fishing effort, catch, and discards of red snapper, and to inform the development of a long-term state-led management strategy for the recreational fishery.”

However, that hardly seems to be the sort of limited testing that the regulation contemplates.

Everyone who fishes recreationally under the permit—which as a practical matter means every angler who fishes for South Atlantic red snapper—is subject to the “EXEMPTIONS AND FISHING RESTRICTIONS” section of the permit, which provides, in part,

“Unless specifically exempted or required by this EFP, all other federal regulations continue to apply.  During the 2026 recreational fishing season only, this EFP exempts participants conforming to these terms and conditions from the following regulations.

1)     50 CFR 622.181(c)(2) that restricts combining harvest limits of red snapper in federal waters with any harvest limitations in state waters, limits the harvest and possession of red snapper to the specified season, and applies these limitations to a federally permitted for-hire vessel in both state and federal waters.

2)     50 CFR 622.183(b)(5) that specifies when the recreational season will occur each year.

3)     50 CFR 622.193(y)(2) that specifies the annual catch limit and accountability measures applicable to the recreational harvest of red snapper.”

Florida argued that such exemptions were needed because

“short fishing seasons that drive an artificially compressed level of fishing effort, and therefore a lack of reliable catch and discard information, have compounded management of the Atlantic red snapper fishery into an untenable situation.  To gather baseline data that is reflective of catch, effort, and discard rates associated with an expanded fishing season, FWC is proposing to monitor the recreational red snapper fishery through an extended 2026 fishing season…Due to the issues listed above regarding the need for baseline data due to the lack of adequate data currently being used to manage Atlantic red snapper, FWC will not submit projected landings for year 1, as any estimate would be highly uncertain and not scientifically defensible…”

Florida made that claim even though the current annual catch limit for the recreational red snapper fishery was derived from data collected on an annual, regional basis, not on landings in any one state or during a particular time period (which finer-scale data tend to be more uncertain), and despite the fact that most angling-linked fishing mortality is attributed to red snapper that die after release; the uncertainty associated with the release estimate, at least for four of the past five years, was acceptably low under NMFS guidelines for data quality, although the data related to the much smaller number of red snapper that are intentionally harvested is plagued by higher level of uncertainty.

Why the data collection study could not have been truly limited, and accomplished with a smaller number of anglers, rather than the entire red snapper angling community, fishing under the EFP remains unclear.

While allowing widespread recreational fishing under an exempted fishing permit occurred once before, when red snapper anglers were allowed to do so in the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf EFPs restricted anglers to the federally established annual catch limit.  The South Atlantic EFPs apparently don’t include that requirement because, as Roger Young, the executive director of the FWC, whined to Secretary Lutnick,

“Florida’s EFP did not mirror the Gulf of America exactly because of decades of mismanagement in the South Atlantic.  For example, consider the way NOAA Fisheries manages Red Snapper in the South Atlantic in comparison to the Gulf of America.  In the South Atlantic, dead discards are directly taken ‘off the top’ of the Red Snapper ACL, reducing allowable recreational harvest from 365,404 fish to 22,797 fish.  In the Gulf of America, discards are not ‘taken off the top,’ providing significantly more harvest opportunities…”

While that may be true, South Atlantic anglers are still killing far more red snapper than they land as a result of release mortality, and those fish need to be considered when calculating overall removals and how such removals impact the health of the stock.

Florida, and all of the EFPs, seem to be ignoring those discards entirely.

So, there is no reason to assume that the EFPs will result in lower overall fishing mortality.  After all, even if release mortality is high, and leads to hundreds of thousands of dead South Atlantic red snapper, some percentage of the released fish survive, while the mortality rate of retained fish is always 100%.  So while the EFPs will allow some current discards to be converted into landings, unless anglers stop fishing entirely once they put their first red snapper in the boat—and I don’t think any of us are naïve enough to expect them to do that—the overall impact on red snapper discard mortality will probably be close to nil.

And given that we’re still talking about a 326-day closed season off Florida, and a 303-day closed season off the rest of the South Atlantic states, when people are still going to be fishing for other bottom fish, and incidentally catching, releasing, and killing large numbers of red snapper in the process, anyone who believes that the EFPs will lead to lower overall fishing mortality is only kidding themselves.

Which leads to what may be the key question in the lawsuit.

Can an exempted fishing permit which will inevitably lead to severe overfishing be validly issued by NMFS?

Florida’s Roger Young contends that it can, arguing that

“there is nothing in the Magnuson-Stevens Act…that dictates an EFP’s harvest be included in annual catch limits.”

While that may be true, Magnuson-Stevens does state that

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing,”

and also requires that any fishery management plan

“shall contain the conservation and management measures…which are necessary and appropriate for the conservation and management of the fishery to prevent overfishing…  [formatting omitted]”

The law contains multiple provisions relating to ending overfishing, but nowhere states that overfishing pursuant to an exempted fishing permit is acceptable.  Considering Magnuson-Stevens’ general policy of preventing overfishing from occurring, the legality of issuing an exempted fishing permit that will inevitably cause substantial levels of overfishing is certainly open to question.

Whether the South Atlantic red snapper EFPs, with their broad application to all red snapper anglers and the certainty that they will lead to extreme overfishing of the red snapper stock, can escape legal sanction merely by stating that the annual catch limit and accountability measures will not apply to any red snapper fisherman in the South Atlantic this year is a question that only a court can decide.

We can only hope that the court deciding this action recognizes that the South Atlantic red snapper EFPs are not about experimental fishing at all, and that the motivation for their issuance was less about data collection than about finding a creative way for recreational fishermen to kill more fish while escaping any accountability for overfishing the red snapper stock.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act has already been weakened by court decisions like the one in Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. Raimondo, which allowed recreational fishermen to sidestep some of the conservation provisions of federal law, and decided that an annual catch limit was not, in itself, an absolute limit on anglers’ landings.

Should the farce that is the South Atlantic red snapper EFPs be adjudged a legal management action, the court’s decision will inevitably encourage other assaults on Magnuson-Stevens, which could easily leave the law so weakened and vulnerable to further attack that regulators will no longer be able to effectively manage recreational fisheries.

That would constitute a temporary victory for the recreational fishing industry and the anglers’ rights crowd, but the fish, and all fishermen, would only lose in the end.

GOOD NEWS FOR ATLANTIC BLUEFIN ANGLERS

 

I’m drafting this post aboard an Amtrak train, headed from Washington back up to New York’s Penn Station, where I’ll grab another train out to Long Island.  For the last few days, I’ve been attending the spring meeting of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel, where we spent much of the meeting’s first day talking about bluefin tuna.

For recreational fishermen, the news was good.

The recreational bluefin tuna fishery was in a bit of disarray last year, after unusually high landings in the General, Harpoon, and Angling categories in 2024 caused the United States to exceed its quota, established by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, by 141.2 metric tons.  78% of that overage, or 110.1 metric tons, was attributable to the Angling Category.  Because ICCAT requires that any nation that overfishes its annual ICCAT quota must pay the overage back in the following year, and because the United States allocates the payback across sectors in proportion to each sector’s overage, that meant that the 2025 Angling Category quota had to be reduced from 297.4 metric tons to just 187.3 mt.

In addition, the early season fishing for bluefin in the lower mid-Atlantic was extremely good in early 2025, leading to the Angling Category Trophy allocation for the southern region to be quickly exceeded.  There were also significant early landings in the Large School/Small Medium Category.  Because a new administration had just come into power in Washington, bringing along not only the usual bureaucratic disruption that occurs during any administration change, but also a temporary ban on all new regulations, NMFS couldn’t deal with those landings on a timely basis, leaving managers with even less Angling Category fish to work with. 

That left the managers walking a very fine line.  They wanted to let recreational fishermen catch their entire 2025 allocation, and allow the season to run as long as possible, to provide anglers along the entire East Coast a chance to participate in the fishery and so maximize social and economic returns.  At the same time, they had to be very careful not to exceed the overall 2025 quota, for ICCAT rules provided that, if any nation exceeded its quota two years in a row, that nation could be required to pay back a minimum of 125%, not merely 100%, of the overage in the following year.

NMFS ultimately adopted a 1-fish bag limit and 27- to 73-inch size limit for private boats, with an extra 27- to 47-inch bluefin for for-hire vessels, and even with those restrictive rules had to close the Angling Category fishery in early August.  A lot of fishermen, for-hire vessel operators, and folks in the fishing tackle industry were very unhappy with that outcome.

However, it turned out that NMFS knew exactly what it was doing.

We learned at the HMS Advisory Panel meeting that the Angling Category landings were just 101% of the category’s 2025 allocation, meaning that anglers were allowed to land every pound of fish that they were entitled to, but their overharvest was so small that it was essentially meaningless.  At the same time, the combined United States landings were only 94% of the adjusted 2025 quota, so we avoided exceeding the quota for a second consecutive year, and will not have to pay back any overage at all.

Thus, in 2026, the Angling Category will be able to fish on its full bluefin tuna allocation.  And the news gets better, for while the 2023, 2024, and 2025 allocations were based on an overall United States base quota of 1,341 mt, the 2026, 2027, and 2028 allocations will be based on the higher 1,490.38 mt base quota that was established at the November 2025 ICCAT meeting.

The Angling Category is allocated 22.6% of the overall United States quota, so the increase in base quota means that the Angling Category’s quota should be bumped up from 297.4 to 341.3 metric tons this year, although the regulations needed to implement the increase won’t be finalized until sometime in late summer or early fall.

Right now, the default recreational bluefin tuna regulations are in effect, which permit Angling Category vessels, including those with Charter/Head Boat permits fishing under recreational rules, to retain one bluefin between 27 and 73 inches in length each day, and one “Trophy” of 73 inches or more each year (except for boats fishing in the South Trophy region, which was closed on January 13 when its allocation was exceeded).

However, those regulations won’t be in place throughout the season.  Now that the Advisory Panel has had an opportunity to provide their thoughts on 2026 management measures, we can expect NMFS to put together a suite of rules intended to keep the season open through December 31, if that is at all possible. 

A lot of different considerations will come into play when those management measures are being drafted.

One priority is allowing anglers to fully utilize, but not exceed, their entire quota.  There is no simple formula for accomplishing that goal and, because several factors such as weather and the local availability of fish are beyond NMFS’ control, setting effective quotas is something of a mixture of art and science. 

Sector allocations, as well as the base quota itself, is measured in weight rather than in the number of fish, so regulations that focus on harvesting School category bluefin, rather than Large School and Small Medium fish, tend to favor a longer season, while those that allow a significant harvest of larger fish are more likely to lead to anglers exceeding their quota.  At the same time, once one gets up to Massachusetts and into the Gulf of Maine, School bluefin become more and more difficult to find, with larger fish dominating the fishery; School bluefin-oriented regulations can make it more difficult for northern New England anglers to harvest legal fish, making some sort of compromise necessary.

Historically, there has also been a tendency to favor for-hire vessels over private boats, on the theory that for-hire anglers are more likely to book trips if they can take more fish home.  We can expect that trend to continue in 2026.  There was also some talk at the meeting of providing party/head boats with more liberal regulations than those that govern the charter boat fleet, as the party boats carry more passengers and arguably need even more liberal regulations than the charters in order to sell trips targeting bluefin. 

In an effort to keep such special privileges from getting out of hand, perhaps to the point that they disadvantage the private boat fleet, I suggested that such special regulations be limited to a season that opens later in the year, after private vessels and traditional “six-pack” charters have had abundant opportunities to utilize the available fish.  Others made similar suggestions.

Weather is obviously out of human control, but if we get a situation where a large body of bluefin sets up close to active fishing ports for an extended period, and the weather permits anglers to take advantage of the nearby abundance, landings can spike very quickly.  It was just that sort of situation that caused the big recreational overage of 2024.  Fish concentrating in a particular area, and the resultant sharp increase in landings, can also disadvantage anglers elsewhere on the coast, as the sort of early closure of the fishery that occurred last year can keep anglers in places that traditionally host later-season fisheries to be denied access to the bluefin resource.

To avoid such outcomes, I was one of a number of Advisory Panel members who asked that managers employ regional quotas, with northern and southern regions separated by a line drawn at 39^o 18’ N, which would place the dividing line off southern New Jersey.  The current regulations already allow the use of such regions; separate quotas would help to prevent large early harvests off Virginia and North Carolina from harming northern New England anglers, whose season typically begins later in the summer, while also preventing high harvests off New Jersey, New York, and New England from depriving anglers fishing in places like Ocean City, Maryland of their fisheries, which typically begin later in the fall.

While it is impossible to say with any certainty what 2026 regulations will look like, I’m comfortable in predicting that the bag limit will be two, or perhaps three, fish for the private boats (maybe something like one or two School bluefin and one Large School/Small Medium, or possibly one fish between 27 and 73 inches, plus a second School fish), with an extra bluefin for the for-hires, and a season that will hopefully last throughout the year.

Depending on how many fish anglers land as the season progresses, it is very possible that whatever management measures are originally put in place will either be liberalized, if landings are lower than expected, or made more restrictive, if early harvests are high.  Another season closure is not out of the question, although it would probably occur in the fall, and not at the height of the summer season like it did in 2025.

The bottom line is that the regulations, whatever form they ultimately take, are likely to be significantly less restrictive than they were last year.

Before closing this post, I probably should also address something that wasn’t mentioned at the meeting—which can hopefully be viewed as a very good thing.

In April, I reported that the United States had sent a letter to ICCAT, notifying it that the U.S. would no longer be counting recreational bluefin tuna landings against its annual quota.  At the time, I noted that there was nothing in the relevant ICCAT recommendations that could reasonably be interpreted to support such action, and further noted that it seemed to violate the current ICCAT management approach, and was being condemned by other ICCAT members.  I also observed that, in order to exclude recreational landings from the United States’ quota, NMFS would have to initiate a new rulemaking that authorized such change.

No one from NMFS even alluded to, much less addressed, any such action at the Advisory Panel meeting.  The upcoming bluefin rulemaking, which would adopt the increased base quota, still allocated 22.6% of that base quota to the recreational sector, and the discussion of upcoming rulemaking did not mention any change to how NMFS might treat recreational landings vis-a-vis the U.S. quota in the future.

While the topic did not come up in the meetings, it did come up in casual conversations held among Advisory Panel members over lunch, dinner, and/or drinks.  We were all pretty much in agreement that it was better not to make any official inquiries as to whether the idea still had legs.  A few folks suggested that the person who wrote the letter is no longer in the same position at NMFS, and that maybe whoever replaced him is more then willing to let a bad idea die quietly and with no fanfare at all.

Hopefully, that is the case.

The new, higher recreational allocation, and the fact that we won’t have to be paying back any overages, suggests that 2026 (and, hopefully, 2027 and 2028) could be a very good year for recreational bluefin fishermen.

It would be a shame to screw things up now.

 

 

 

NEW NATIONAL SALTWATER RECREATIONAL FISHERIES POLICY EMPHASIZES ECONOMIC ISSUES

On April 13, 2026 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a press release announcing its newest version of the National Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Policy (Policy), which stated that “The purpose of this policy is to provide guidance for NOAA Fisheries’ consideration in its deliberations pertaining to development and maintenance of enduring and sustainable high quality saltwater recreational fisheries.”

The release further stated that “The policy identifies goals and guiding principles to be integrated into NOAA Fisheries’ planning, budgeting, decision-making, and activities regarding saltwater recreational fishing and includes examples of implementation concepts and strategies supported by NOAA Fisheries.”

The Policy replaces NOAA Fisheries’ original National Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Policy, which was adopted in 2015. Although the Policy remains, in principle, substantially similar to the 2015 version, it places more emphasis on the economic aspects of recreational saltwater fishing. The Policy is also somewhat more detailed than the policy that it replaces, and it addresses some issues for the first time.

Thus, while the original policy simply stated that “It is the policy of [NOAA Fisheries] to foster, support, and enhance a broadly accessible and diverse array of sustainable saltwater recreational fisheries for the benefit and enjoyment of the nation,” and described the scope of the policy by saying, “The policy pertains to non-commercial activities of fishermen who fish for sport or pleasure, as set out in the Magnuson-Stevens Act definition of recreational fishing. That could be retaining (e.g., consuming, sharing) or releasing their catches, as well as the businesses and industries (e.g., the for-hire fleets, bait and tackle businesses, tournaments) which support them,” the current Policy places more focus on the business aspects of recreational fishing.

While the first sentence of the current Policy is not meaningfully different from that of the original policy, additional provisions have been added which recognize “new and emerging priorities,” and specifically state NOAA Fisheries’ interest in “protecting the vibrant tourism and recreation industries that depend on healthy coastal ecosystems.” The language setting out the scope of the Policy has also been expanded, by stating the agency’s commitment to promoting and growing sustainable saltwater recreational fisheries.

The Policy’s focus on enhanced sustainability is encouraging, and is further reflected in a lengthened list of “strategic goals.” While the original policy listed only three such goals, including the support and maintenance of sustainable fisheries resources, including healthy marine habitats; promoting recreational fishing “for the social, cultural, and economic benefit of the nation;” and enabling long-term participation “through science-based conservation and management,” the Policy has expanded that list.

The Policy now recognizes five strategic goals. It retains, in substance, the three included in the original 2015 policy, although it now seeks to promote recreational fishing not to preserve its social and cultural virtues, but instead to do it in a way that “maximizes economic growth and supports coastal communities, tourism, and marine recreational industries.”

That change could, if truly integrated into NOAA Fisheries’ decision-making, move managers away from managing fisheries for abundance (described, in one Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission document, as “put[ting] the interest of the species before the fishery”), so that anglers might encounter more fish, including some large fish, when they venture out on the water, and toward a fishery managed largely for yield, with a higher fishing mortality rate and a population composed primarily of smaller fish, that is intended to appeal to tourists and other anglers more interested in taking fish home for dinner than in fishing for sport. Managers would place less emphasis on the preferences expressed by individual anglers and more on the preferences of the for-hire fishery and the rest of the recreational fishing industry.

The two new goals are far more benign. One would have NOAA Fisheries “Improve the responsiveness of fisheries management to current and future ocean conditions,” which is about as close to an acknowledgement of climate change and a warming ocean as one is likely to see from the agency, given the current atmosphere in Washington, as well as a reason to hope that NOAA Fisheries might finally confront the issue of shifting fish stocks. The other seeks to “Cultivate active stakeholder engagement in the stewardship of recreational fisheries,” something that could only improve the fishery management process.

Just how all of the goals might be achieved is outlined in the Policy’s final section, “Guiding Principles for the Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Policy.” Such principles, largely carried forward from the earlier policy, include “Foster Stewardship,” “Improve Access,” “Promote Participation,” “Increase Engagement,” “Strengthen Partnerships,” and “Advance Innovative Solutions.” All, on their face, are worthy of support although, as always, the devil is in the details, and in this case, some of the details are worthy of a little extra attention.

For example, in the “Foster Stewardship” section, one proposed strategy is to “Support cost-effective community-based restoration, conservation, and enhancement of essential fish habitats. [emphasis added]” While that all sounds fine at first reading, the qualifications of “cost-effective” and “community-based” restoration and conservation could well get in the way of essential habitat projects. That is particularly true of one of the most effective habitat improvement projects of all, dam removal.

On both the Atlantic coast, in places such as Maine’s Penobscot River, and on Pacific waters such as the Yakima River, the removal of dams that had long prevented anadromous fish from reaching their historical spawning grounds has resulted in immediate benefits to a plethora of fish species. However, dam removal can be both costly and controversial, and requiring it not be both “cost effective” and “community-based” could create severe obstacles to any significant dam removal projects.

The next principle, “Improve Access,” is also problematic, as it immediately leads to the question, “What, precisely, does “access” mean?”

“Improve Access” could mean removing physical barriers that separate anglers from the fish they seek, by providing funding to support working waterfronts, maintaining navigable waterways, or perhaps eschewing the creation of marine protected areas where angling is not allowed. Unfortunately, in recent years, we have also seen the recreational fishing industry use the word “access” as a euphemism for killing fish at rates that exceed the mortality levels recommended by fisheries managers. South Atlantic red snapper provide a recent example.

While removing barriers that keep anglers from their quarry is always a good thing, using “angler access” as an excuse to sidestep science-based fisheries management most definitely is not.

Another potential pitfall can be found under the “Increase Engagement” heading, where one strategy would “Develop and ensure meaningful pathways exist for community knowledge and needs to enter the science and management process. [emphasis added]”

There are potentially two problems here.

One is the concept of “community knowledge.” It is true that people who work on and around the water come to understand, through years and even generations of observation, the relationship between the fish that they catch and other natural phenomena. But recognizing that a relationship exists is very different from understanding why it occurs, and anecdotal observations are not the factual equivalent of data-based scientific conclusions. I once had the deckhand on a trawler insist that some birds, like mayflies, only lived for a single day, a conclusion he reached after fishing during the autumn migration and finding the bodies of scores of warblers and other birds, which died of exhaustion after overrunning Long Island during the night, littering the vessel’s decks in the morning.

Local knowledge can be a starting point for scientific research. Many years ago, commercial fishermen argued that the mandatory escape vents in black sea bass pots were too large. The size of the vents, which were intended to allow undersized black sea bass to escape, were based on fish measured at the surface; the fishermen claimed that water pressure at the bottom compressed fish’s bodies and allowed legal-sized fish to escape. Subsequent research demonstrated that the fishermen’s claims were true.

At the same time, anyone who has attended many fisheries hearings, in particular hearings on regulations intended to reduce catch, knows that fishermen will invariably rise to claim that “the science is wrong,” “there are plenty of fish out there,” and “we’re on the water every day and know what’s really going on.” Such comments are frequently made by for-hire vessel operators and other members of the recreational fishing community. While such comments are often made in good faith, they also typically reflect a certain level of confirmation bias, which develops when fishermen focus on good catches made at certain times in certain places and, ignoring other days when fishing is poor, convince themselves that fish populations are healthy and regulations aren’t needed.

The “science…process” should be driven by hard data, and nothing else.

The notion that “community…needs” should “enter the science and management process” is equally dangerous, for biology is objective, while “need” is a very subjective concept. Biology is also non-negotiable. If scientists determine that a certain, specified level of fishing mortality will cause a fish stock to decline, the fact that the fishing industry, or a fishing community, supposedly “needs” to harvest more fish to remain viable will not change the fact that, if that threshold level is exceeded, abundance will decline, and fishermen will end up catching less, not more, in the long term.

Sticking to the science, and only to the science, is critical to a sustainable management process.

Finally, under the “Advance Innovative Solutions” heading, there is the strategy to “Develop and apply aquaculture tools and technologies that support recreational fisheries and coastal ecosystems.” Stripped of its formal wording and reduced to the language of the everyday angler, that means “Build more fish hatcheries,” and some recreational fishermen will have no problem with that, as hatcheries allow jurisdictions to dump a multitude of artificially propagated fish into coastal ecosystems, so that anglers can take more fish home.

Texas, which has long employed hatcheries to produce red drum, spotted seatrout, and other coastal species, readily admits that hatcheries “are a tool used…to ensure that harvest levels are sustained.” Hatcheries free fisheries managers from the need to maintain fish populations that are capable of sustaining themselves through natural reproduction, and from the restrictive regulations that are often needed to do so. Instead, hatcheries allow anglers to chronically overfish popular species, and remove fish from coastal waters at rates that could never be supported by natural reproduction.

Yet, once marine fisheries managers and recreational fishermen become dependent on hatcheries, it is very difficult to end that dependence, even though hatcheries do little to restore natural fish populations. The first hatcheries for Pacific salmon were built in the late 1800s, and many others have been built since. Yet, despite nearly 150 years of hatchery production, 28 runs of Pacific salmon and the closely-related steelhead trout are currently listed as “endangered” or “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act, while no run that was previously “enhanced” with hatchery fish has ever been restored to the point that it could sustain itself solely through natural reproduction. The story is the same for other species, including red drum, spotted seatrout, southern flounder, Florida pompano, and white seabass; hatcheries may provide anglers with more fish to take home, but at least in saltwater, they have never led to a self-sustaining, naturally reproducing population of any recreationally important species.

It could thus be argued that hatcheries are the antithesis of effective fisheries management, and not a strategy that the Policy ought to contemplate.

The bottom line is that the Policy isn’t perfect. It contains some clearly problematic provisions. Yet it remains a valuable document that built on its 2015 predecessor and, if followed by NOAA Fisheries, should provide real benefits to both recreational fishermen and the fishes that they pursue.

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This essay first appeared in "From the Waterfront," the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/

MAGICAL THINKING: SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER EFPS

 

Managing the red snapper fishery, and particularly the recreational red snapper fishery, in the South Atlantic has proved to be one of the most intransigent challenges for East Coast fisheries managers.

It’s not because the fish are scarce.

While that was a problem once, with the stock declining to just three percent of its spawning potential in 2009, subsequent efforts have rebuilt it to the point where it is no longer overfished, and no longer experiencing overfishing. 

But that didn’t solve the biggest problem facing red snapper managers.  Red snapper have become abundant enough that a lot of them are being caught by anglers fishing for other varieties of bottom fish when the red snapper season is closed, and those snapper are being caught in waters deep enough to make barotrauma a real problem.  As a result, scientists believe that many of the red snapper that are caught during the closed season and returned to the water by anglers die after being released.

To compensate, the recreational red snapper fishery in the South Atlantic has been burdened with a very short open season, which has ranged from just one to ninc days, with recent seasons at the shortest end of that spectrum.  Even that hasn’t been enough to fully constrain anglers to their annual catch limit.  As a result, a group of commercial fishermen have sued, asking a court to compel the National Marine Fisheries Service to get the recreational kill under control.  In late 2024 NMFS, recognizing the merit of the commercial fishermen’s arguments, entered into a settlement agreement to adopt regulations that would end recreational overfishing by June 6, 2025.

On January 14, 2025, NMFS came up with a proposed regulation, Amendment 59 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery in the South Atlantic, that would not only have gotten overfishing under control, but would also, because of decreased dead discards, have nearly triple recreational and commercial red snapper landings.  However, it would also have required a section of ocean off northern Florida to be closed to all bottom fishing, from December 1 through the end of February.

The recreational fishing community found the proposal completely unacceptable.  They wanted to be able to land more red snapper, but didn’t want to reduce their high dead discard rate, if that meant closing the bottom fishing season off northern Florida for three months during the winter.

That might sound selfish, irresponsible, and wasteful; the sort of thing that you might expect from a spoiled child rather than a group of supposedly rational adults.  Yet, as it turned out, the recreational representatives were able to make their arguments to the only people who might think that such a juvenile response made sense—the incoming administration in Washington.

Thus, under the new administration, the final version of Amendment 59 did not include the three-month bottom fishing closure; but it did revise the definition of overfishing, the definition of an overfished stock, the acceptable biological catch, and the annual catch limits (including sector catch limits) for South Atlantic red snapper, which allowed it to declare that overfishing was no longer occurring.  As if someone waved a magical wand, NMFS’ concerns about recreational overfishing just seemed to disappear.

The commercial folks apparently didn’t believe in magic, though, because they’re suing NMFS again, arguing that Amendment 59 will allow recreational overfishing to continue, and harm commercial fishermen as a result. 

But even with those changes, the recreational fishermen weren’t all that satisfied with Amendment 59.  While it let them keep pouring out dead, discarded red snapper during the closed snapper season, it didn’t let them kill more fish to take home.  So like a child who wheedles another piece of cake out of Grandma after their parents say “No,” organizations affiliated with the recreational fishing industry pushed to have state agencies manage red snapper, knowing that the states would allow anglers to land the snapper denied them by both good science and federal law.

And so, just a few days ago, NMFS announced that

“NOAA Fisheries Issues Exempted fishing Permits Authorizing State Management of Recreational Harvested [sic] Red Snapper in the South Atlantic in 2026.”

Apparently, state management of the South Atlantic red snapper stock, under the recently approved exempted fishing permits, is going to bring us another magical moment.  For if you recall, under federal fisheries management, the 2025 recreational red snapper season in the South Atlantic lasted only two days, and at that was twice as long as the season set for 2024.

Yet, now that state fisheries managers have been allowed to wave their sorcerers’ wands, Florida anglers will be able to enjoy a 39-day season, broken up into 30 days in May/June and three three-day periods in October, while Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina anglers will be allowed to fish for 62 consecutive days in July and August.

It’s nothing short of miraculous that just switching over from federal to state management will lead to seasons that are 20 to 30 times as long as those previously permitted by NMFS, presumably all without overfishing or doing any harm to the stock at all.

But, as was the case with Amendment 59, there are some people out there who just don’t believe in magic. 

The Ocean Conservancy deemed the exempted fishing permits and the move to state management

"An end run around sustainable management,"

while observing that

“Just last year, NOAA’s own analysis showed that a two-day recreational fishing season was needed to prevent overfishing.  There is no doubt that these exemptions to allow months-long fishing seasons will lead to overfishing, while new, unproven data collection measures mean we likely won’t even realize the fish are declining until the damage is done.”

The organization’s press release goes on to say,

“Ocean Conservancy has used available data to estimate the amount of fish that could be caught with exempted permits.  The annual catch limit for the recreational sector is 22,797 fish.  A recent two-day red snapper fishing season in Florida alone resulted in 24,885 landed fish, which exceeds that limit.  A simple expansion using this Florida landings rate, and ignoring the contribution from other states which will have even longer fishing seasons, suggests that as many as 485,000 fish could be landed in a 39-day season.  This is over 20 times the annual catch limit—a clear violation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

The Environmental Defense Fund expressed similar sentiments, while also noting that

“Recreational fishing is an American pastime, and responsible innovation is critical to managing fisheries for the future.  But NOAA’s decision allows states to sidestep core federal safeguards that exist to prevent overfishing at a time when South Atlantic red snapper remains overfished [sic] and under a rebuilding plan.  These permits go well beyond the limited, pilot-scale purpose of exempted fishing permits and instead function as an alternative system without enforceable catch limits or accountability measures required by law.”

So how did we get to this point, where someone within NMFS or its parent, the Department of Commerce, seems to have contradicted NMFS’ findings from a year ago, and has suddenly decided that a season 20 times as long as last year’s won’t lead to overfishing—even though last year’s two-day season did?

We might find part of the answer in the cover letter that Roger Young, the Executive Director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, sent to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on January 23, 2026, along with Florida’s state management proposal.  After two introductory paragraphs, Mr. Young got down to business:

“First, we want to reinforce our appreciation for your unwavering commitment to rein in bureaucracy and return the power of fisheries management and conservation to the states where it belongs.  Unfortunately, based on an initial review of the commentary and questions within NOAA’s response letter, it appears that NOAA intends to delay the success of our shared goals.  To ensure that this is not the case, we determined that directly responding to you, rather than through NOAA, was crucial to our shared success.  To that end, to mutually maintain the momentum that our teams have built over the past year, it is abundantly clear that direct involvement from our offices is crucial.  If not, based on precedent, career NOAA staff will inevitably create a bureaucratic blockade at the behest of status-quo defending adversarial interests to prevent Florida’s EFP from going into effect in May 2026.  Given the social, economic, and cultural importance of recreational fishing in Florida, we greatly appreciate your leadership in seeing Florida’s application through to approval so Floridians can enjoy their God-given rights to recreate, and enjoy, our natural resources.

“Under President Trump’s leadership in 2017, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross blazed a trail in the Gulf of America to state management in recreational Red Snapper fishing.  Bureaucratic intransigence and inertia at NOAA were guiding anglers to the dead end of federal regulators’ overreach.  By 2018, all five states in the Gulf of America were firmly in control of their destiny and managing this public fishery for the benefit of the public.  The number of days of fishing proposed Gulf of America-wide by NOAA Fisheries in 2017: three days.  The number of fishing days announced by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2025: 127 days.

“Based on Florida’s experience in seeking assignment of state management authority in the Gulf of America, much of NOAA’s response appears to potentially delay action under the guise of ‘data’ collection—the same tactics that led Congress to force NOAA to accept and approve state EFP’s [sic] in the Gulf of America given the weaponization of NOAA under President Obama…  [emphasis in original]”

The letter provided a master class in ass-kissing, emphasizing everything—“rein in bureaucracy,” “bureaucratic blockade,” “status-quo defending,” favorable mention of Trump’s first term, and even “weaponization” of a federal agency by “President Obama” (although “Barak Hussein Obama” might have been worth a few extra points)—that was likely to hit administration hot buttons.

Of course, Roger Young’s letter missed a couple of important points.  When he argued that

“there is nothing in [the] Magnuson-Stevens [Fishery Conservation and Management] Act (MSA) that dictates an EFP’s harvest be included in annual catch limits,”

he not only ignored National Standard 1, which states that

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing…”

but seemingly implied that it was acceptable for an annual recreational catch limit of 22,797 fish to be overfished roughly twentyfold—by more than 450,000 fish, if the Ocean Conservancy’s calculations are correct (which they may not be, as in the real world, such an extreme leve of removals would probably lower abundance and catchability to the point that the 2025 fishing mortality rate, achieved over a 2-day season, could not be maintained for the full duration of the 39- or 62-day seasons planned for 2026)—so long as that overfishing occurred pursuant to an exempted fishing permit.

The letter was also quick to criticize the 3-day federal waters red snapper season in the Gulf of Mexico in 2017, while failing to mention that such short season was adopted in order to offset the excessively long state waters seasons allowed by state fisheries managers in that year.

But given Roger Young’s intended audience, it is highly unlikely that such omissions were ever noted or, even if someone had noticed them, that they would have had any influence on the outcome.  The entire purpose of his letter was to move the decision making on the exempted fishing permits away from the scientists and subject matter experts at NMFS, and put it in the hands of people who couldn’t tell a red snapper from a red herring on their best day.

Thus, the South Atlantic states’ exempted fishing permit requests received an enthusiastic response; on May 1, 2026, President Donald Trump himself declared, in a social media post,

“WE JUST DELIVERED A HUGE WIN for our Great Fishermen and Anglers in FLORIDA, GEORGIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, and NORTH CAROLINA!  We have just officially approved ALL STATE PERMITS for the 2026 Red Snapper recreational season.  For years, our GREAT FISHERMEN have been punished with VERY short Federal fishing seasons despite RECORD HIGH fish populations and the States begging to oversee these permits.  The incompetent Biden Administration tried to SHUT DOWN THE OCEANS to our Fishermen, entirely.  We love and respect our Fishermen and, unlike the Democrats, will only do good for them.  To all those who fish ‘Red Snapper’—TRUMP and NOAA are delivering for you.   ENJOY!!  President DONAND J. TRUMP.”

And there you have it.

In 2025, anglers in the four South Atlantic states managed to harvest an estimated 38,048 red snapper—15,251 fish over the annual catch limit—even though the federal red snapper season only lasted for two days.  In 2026, that catch limit will remain unchanged, but even with state management extending the red snapper season to 39 days in Florida and 62 days in the three other South Atlantic states, South Atlantic red snapper landings are expected to remain at sustainable levels.

Maybe those folks who believe that there is something magical about state-level fisheries management are onto something.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REGIONAL FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCILS: "A FAIR AND BALANCED APPORTIONMENT"

 

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act states that

“it is therefore declared to be the purposes of the Congress in this Act…to establish Regional Fishery Management Councils to exercise sound judgment in the stewardship of fishery resources through the stewardship of fishery resources through the preparation, monitoring, and revision of [fishery management] plans under circumstances (A) which will enable the States, the fishing industry, consumer and environmental organizations, and other interested persons to participate in, and advise on, the establishment and administration of such plans, and (B) which take into account the social and economic needs of the States.  [formatting omitted]”

To help achieve that purpose, Magnuson-Stevens further provides,

“The Secretary [of Commerce], in making appointments [to the regional fishery management councils], shall, to the extent practicable, ensure a fair and balanced apportionment, on a rotating or other basis, of the active participants (or their representatives) in the commercial and recreational fisheries under the jurisdiction of the Council…[T]he Secretary shall submit to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries of the House of Representatives [an annual] report on the actions taken by the Secretary to ensure that such fair and balanced apportionment is achieved.  The report shall (i) list the fisheries under the jurisdiction of each Council, outlining for each fishery the type and quantity of fish harvested, fishing and processing methods employed, the number of participants, the duration and range of the fishery, and other distinguishing characteristics; (ii) assess the membership of each Council in terms of the apportionment of the active participants in each fishery; and (iii) state the Secretary’s plans and schedule for actions to achieve a fair and balanced apportionment on the Council for the active participants in any such fishery.  [emphasis added, formatting omitted]”

It is a requirement that often seems to be honored more in the breach than in practice.  Few regional fishery management councils have a truly “fair and balanced apportionment” of council seats among the various subsectors of the commercial and recreational fisheries, although the nature of the imbalance is different on different councils.

Thus, in the House of Representatives, Congressman Nick Begich (R-AK) recently introduced H.R. 8598, the “North Pacific Fishery Management Council Representation Enhancement Act of 2026.”  He explained,

“The North Pacific Fishery Management Council was established to advance policies in the interest of all user groups across our fisheries.  In Alaska, many different user groups rely on the same resource, and we need to make sure every one of them has a seat at the table.  Ensuring balanced representation is critical to addressing broader challenges facing Alaskan fisheries, including declining abundance.  This bill is about restoring balance, strengthening accountability, and making sure fisheries management works for all Alaskans.”

 A press release announcing the legislation’s introduction stated that

“The bill amends…Magnuson-Stevens…to require that Alaska’s appointments to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) include representation from recreational fishing, small-scale commercial fishing, and subsistence user groups.

“The NPFMC plays a central role in managing fisheries in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska.  However, concerns have grown that current council composition does not adequately reflect the full scale of Alaska’s fishing communities, including subsistence users, small boat fishermen, and recreational stakeholders…

“The bill directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…to develop guidelines to verify representation and implement the changes, with new requirements taking effect for future council appointments.”

The motivation for the new bill was undoubtedly the ongoing debate over the bycatch and resultant dead discards of salmon, halibut, various crabs, and other living marine resources by large factory trawlers that target walleye pollock in a high-volume but low-value (per pound) fishery that is the largest commercial fishery in the nation.  As reported by National Fishermen in a 2023 article,

“Amid widespread consternation about the incidental numbers of halibut, crab, salmon, and other species that trawlers haul up in the Bering Sea, state and federal management regimes have come under increasing fire.

“To some, inaction by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to impose trawl bycatch caps on salmon and crab demands an overhaul of the 11-member panel that votes on management strategies submitted to the Department of Commerce…

“David Bayes, a charter boat operator out of Homer [Alaska] and the Facebook administrator of STOP Trawling Now, says that it wasn’t the original plan of the council’s founders to stack the panel with members whose conflicts of interest could undermine other facets of fisheries management.  But he adds that it evolved quickly as various sectors in the industry scrambled for representation and votes in key fisheries issues.

“’If one looks back at the verbiage and intent when the regional councils were formed through the Magnuson-Stevens Act, once sees that the lawmakers at the time had the forward thinking to realize that in order for dynamic and ever-changing fisheries to be regulated, they would need to be regulated by the fishermen themselves.’

“Bayes adds that conflict of interest was acceptable at the time the councils were founded, ‘because that was the only way to have fishermen regulating fishermen.’

“But competition for representation among Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, and conflicts among gear types quickly changed who was placed in the seats and left the fishermen behind.

“’They’re bringing the heaviest hitters they can find, which are often government officials, CEOs, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-political staff, etcetera,’ says Bayes.”

Similar appointment and representation problems exist on every state, although the precise form that they take can differ.

In New England, for example, the appointed members of the New England Fishery Management Council include seven who are either commercial fishermen or closely allied with the commercial fishing industry, three charter boat operators, and two members of the marine conservation community.  There are no private anglers (that is, anglers who fish solely for recreation and/or personal use, and have no business connection to the fishery) at all.  Commercial fishermen, provided that they have the support of just half of the state and federal government seats, can dictate the outcome of any vote.

Along the Gulf of Mexico, the eleven appointed members of the Gulf Fishery Management Council have a very different look.  There, six members are recreational fishermen or closely tied to the recreational fishing industry (including one legislative affairs specialist who serves as a consultant for the Center for Sportfishing Policy and an academic who sits on the Coastal Conservation Association’s Board of Directors), just two are commercial fishermen, two are academics (one of whom describes himself as a “lifelong recreational fisherman” while the other is “an avid recreational fisherman, licensed captain, and co-owner of a seafood market), and one member is both a recreational for-hire captain and a commercial fishermen.

It’s thus probably not surprising that most votes at the Gulf Council tend to favor the recreational sector.

Here in New York, we have a very active recreational fishery, with four important recreational species—bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass—managed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, acting cooperatively with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.  Over the past five years—2021 through 2025—New York anglers have actively pursued all four species, taking an estimated total of 6,398,348 trips primarily targeting bluefish, 13,495,821 targeting summer flounder, 6,696,384 targeting scup, and 2,108,877 targeting black sea bass.  The fishery has been dominated by private anglers, fishing either from shore or from their own vessels, who were responsible for 99.8% of all bluefish trips, 96.8% of all trips primarily targeting summer flounder, 96.3% of all trips targeting scup, and 92.9% of all trips targeting black sea bass.

Yet, since I stepped down from my at-large seat on the Mid-Atlantic Council in 2005, New York has not had a single private angler hold a Council seat.  In over two decades, the recreational seats have been held either by for-hire operators or by individuals closely allied with the for-hire industry or, in one instance, by a former state fisheries manager.

While I can’t say that New York’s private anglers—who unquestionably dominate its recreational fishery—have been completely unrepresented on the Mid-Atlantic Council, as the state’s fisheries managers have always done a reasonably good job of representing everyone’s interests, the lack of private anglers on the Mid-Atlantic Council representing New York, or any other Mid-Atlantic state, hardly represents the kind of “fair and balanced apportionment” of seats, either from New York or on the Mid-Atlantic Council as a whole, contemplated by Magnuson-Stevens.

When the people holding the recreational seats from any given state, or on the Council as a whole, only represent those making—to be very generous—5% of the recreational trips for Council-managed species, something is definitely very, very wrong.

And we should never pretend that the interests and the objectives of the private anglers and the for-hire fleet is the same. 

In the Mid-Atlantic, we only need to look at the current efforts to draft a “Recreational Sector Separation Amendment, that

“may consider managing for-hire recreational fisheries separately from other recreational fishing modes.”

That’s carefully worded language that doesn’t assume any particular outcome should the proposed amendment be adopted, but anyone following the process knows that the for-hire operators are looking for special privileges for their customers, that will allow them to take more and/or smaller fish, perhaps during a longer season, than those allowed to the private anglers that make up most of the fishery.

Since there is only a single recreational allocation, and both private and for-hire anglers take their fish out of the same allotted pool—at various meetings, the for-hire members sitting on the Council have made it abundantly clear that they don’t want a fixed quota for their sector alone— if the for-hire fleet is gifted with regulations that allow their customers to take more fish home, everyone else in the fishery are going to have to get a little less, for fishery management is, in the end, a zero-sum game; when someone wins, by getting more fish, someone else must lose and give up some part of their share.

But when private anglers have no effective representation on the Council, there’s nobody to object when they end up on the losing end.

In the Gulf of Mexico, we see something happening that is the mirror image of what’s going on in the Mid-Atlantic.

Sector separation already exists in the Gulf red snapper fishery.  It was adopted a number of years ago in response to chronic overfishing by private red snapper anglers, who exerted enough political pressure on their states to extend state-waters red snapper seasons, and so reduce the federal waters season to just three days—remember, it is a zero-sum game—which would be the kiss of death for the federally permitted for-hire fleet.  In order to protect the for-hires from the excesses of the private boats, the Gulf Fisheries Management Council (then called the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council, although that name has since been changed for political reasons) established a separate sub-quota for the for-hire industry.

Since then, the Council adopted Amendment 50 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico, which allows states limited flexibility to set regulations for their private boat recreational red snapper fishery, so long as those regulations constrain each state to its federally-established recreational quota.  But the for-hire red snapper fishery remained the exclusive domain of federal fisheries managers.

Now, the private angler-dominated Gulf Council is considering a new Amendment 64:  Delegation of the Federal For-Hire Management Authority for Red Snapper to the Gulf States, which would allocate the for-hire red snapper quota among the states, and allow states the same sort of limited regulatory flexibility that they currently have in the private boat fishery.

While that might seem benign on its face, for-hire operators are concerned that it will both allow some states to take advantage of others, stealing a portion of their for-hire quota, and possibly even provide a means for states to give some of what are now for-hire fish to private boat anglers.  As explained by long-time for-hire operator Gary Jarvis, of Destin, Florida,

“It became abundantly clear that this was about a fish grab.  The draft document provided alternatives for how the allocation would disseminate to each state’s for-hire fleet, and was determined on EACH STATE’S OWN REPORTED LANDINGS.

“The state of Louisiana was not satisfied with this breakdown, so they proposed a new methodology.  The new methodology would move fish from the eastern gulf into the western gulf.  It would reduce Florida’s fleet percentage from over 48% of the federal for-hire allocation to over 38%.  This literally shows they want to control the federal for-hire fleet but it would not be enough fish for what they want out of the document or…they did not report the correct amount of fish in the first place.  That is the reality of this document…

“When it came to public testimony, to call it anything less than ass whipping would be an understatement.  Federally permitted for-hire fishermen and women from Florida (Ft. Myers, Tampa, Big Bend, Panama City, and Destin), Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas all gave public comment stating they wanted nothing to do with state management of the Gulf federally permitted fleet.  The only person who gave testimony in favor of it was the executive director of the Louisiana Charter Boat Association.

“This association is funded by the State of Louisiana, through a percentage of every fishing license sale in the state, via a department which is tremendously influenced by CCA.  The executive director could not get a single one of their members to give testimony in favor of this, despite never having fished professionally or in control of any federal permits…”

Given the antipathy the for-hire fleet seems to have for the proposed amendment, it’s pretty clear that the amendment is being shoved down their throats by representatives of the private boat fishery.

So, while the precise details differ from council to council, the underlying theme remains the same—Magnuson-Stevens’ requirement for “fair and balanced apportionment” of council seats is being ignored just about everywhere when appointments to the regional fishery management councils.

Although there might be a handful of exceptions, council seats are typically awarded to those who are supported by organizations that have the right political connections and make the right contributions to the right parties and elected officials at the right time.  Experience in and knowledge of the fishery means far less than experience in and knowledge of how to bend the political process to a sector’s or subsector’s advantage.  Depending on the council involved, small-boat commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, for-hire operators, subsistence fishermen, conservation interests, and others who lack the needed political clout in a particular region might all find themselves marginalized and their concerns ignored by representatives of more powerful special interests.

Whether one is dealing with the North Pacific, New England, Mid-Atlantic, Gulf, or any other regional fisheries management council, the situation remains the same..

Thus, Congressmen Begich’s bill makes a lot of sense.  But assuring fair and balanced apportionment shouldn’t be limited to Alaska and the North Pacific Council.

What we really need is legislation that will make it a reality on every coast of the United States.